Accountants are worried about technology, change, et al.

If you haven’t immersed yourself in the collective anxiety of the accounting profession lately, I highly recommend this Accounting Today column. There are a plethora of quotes to choose from, but Grant Thornton CEO Mike McGuire has a good one: “Our industry is being disrupted by accelerating change driven by technology.”

Or AICPA President, CEO, and avid mushroom hunter Barry Melancon: “It all comes down to one thing: mastering the pace of change. Every day, we hear the latest examples of the enormous disruption in business and finance from technology, globalization and the changing expectations of employers and clients.”

Sometimes I wonder what leaders in accounting will worry about when technology, disruption, and change take a breather. Nuclear war? Climate change? Ludicrous doomsday predictions? Maybe this fixation on technology and change distracts everyone from the saber-rattling of childish authoritarian world leaders. If so, I can understand the temptation.

Hacks

Accountants behaving badly

As regular readers of ANR, you know that when it comes to accountants behaving badly, the victims are irrelevant. Bad accountants will steal from children, the elderly, the mentally ill, the homeless, war veterans, Cubs fans, cancer patients, the list goes on. If there’s an organization with lax controls and virtually no oversight, an opportunistic and morally compromised accountant will find it and take its money.

A grand jury has indicted a 69-year-old woman for allegedly stealing nearly $6 million from a Hawaii nonprofit that helps those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, in what’s being called a “particularly egregious” case.

Officials identified the former Arc in Hawaii employee as Lola Jean Amorin, and called her siphoning of money from the agency over more than a decade one of the worst cases of embezzlement ever handled by the city prosecutor’s office.

“Besides the shocking amount of money that was taken, what makes this case particularly egregious is the fact that the stolen money was intended to benefit children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” city prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro said, in a news release.

Can someone forward this to Keith Kaneshiro so he can sign up for our newsletter? His bar for egregious accountant behavior seems a little low.